Edward Burra (1905-1976)

Painted in 1934 at the age of 29, The Clothes Shop (Bazaar) reminds us of Burra’s delight in travelling the world stage. By the time he had landed in New York, the northern neighbourhood of Harlem was going through its own cultural renaissance. Burra had been fascinated by American Jazz music since his teenage years and revelled in the atmosphere emerging in Harlem’s exotic bars, jazz and blues clubs and dynamic theatre scene.

The colourful garments worn by the figures in this painting come across strikingly in this watercolour form, particularly the flash of the blue suits. The ‘bazaar’ in the title of the present work references the bright red fez hats, an item Burra would have been familiar with since he had only been in Morocco two years before he painted this work.